Religions and mystics

Marie Rouget, called Marie Noël, was born in 1883 in Auxerre, a small town in Burgundy, in which she remained until her death in 1967. Born to a cultivated bourgeois family, she attended high school only for the final years, due to her fragile health. Her father, trained as a philosopher and a religious sceptic, (although she described him as spiritual), and a teacher of art history at the high school in Auxerre, attended to her intellectual education. Her mother and grandmother saw to her religious and artistic education (Marie Noël was a very good musician). The maternal influence dominated, as the child embraced the Catholic faith and became very pious. When she was about fifteen, she considered becoming a Carmelite nun, but her independence of character deterred her. She was hospitalised for nervous depression in 1920. The psychiatrist who cared for her and discovered her talent as a poet recommended her to an editor. It was the beginning of a discreet literary career which was not very productive. She was single, not by choice, and was often taken up with the kind of work expected of single women at the time: charitable works and caring for the family. In addition, her poor health often made intellectual work impossible.

She was well versed in the behaviour expected of women – discretion, humility, devotion to domestic life and avoidance of involvement in the public arena - and the writer was surrounded by clerical men of letters who advised her on the choice of poems for publication. They took an interest in her writing and encouraged her. In her Notes intimes, [Notes for myself] Marie Noël explains how her mentors worked with her .

Her whole oeuvre is steeped in a posture of humility. In her Notes intimes, she sometimes describes herself as “a nanny goat”, a “gentle little old wise woman, neither seen nor known”, “a child” (p.158), “a Carmelite manquée” (p.231). In a particularly skilful way, she took care not to be seen as having any ambition in two domains which she knew to be the preserve of others: literature, of writers, and religion, of churchmen. She wasn't a writer, she 'sang' as it came to her, not as a profession or in a studied way.

Her correspondence confirms that she always took great care that her behaviour could never be prejudicial to morality. When she was nearly forty, she asked permission to read works contained in the Index^[1] , in this case, Victor Hugo^[2] . Neither did she ever publish anything that could be turned down by the Imprimatur^[3] .

Marie Noël put a great deal of effort into reconciling her different social ties and influences: woman, writer and Catholic; each one of these social categories carried with them demands on her behaviour which were more or less explicit. The writer needs to be autonomous and to prove their freedom from all political and religious institutions. At that time, a Catholic woman, as was explicitly stated by the religious authorities, had to submit to her husband and the men of her family. An individual claiming to be a Catholic was obliged to respect prescribed dogma.